Monday, August 25, 2014

Virtual Manipulatives is a free app for the iPad. Virtual Manipulatives is created by ABCya.com, which is a great site to visit.

Virtual Manpulatives allows you to connect the concept of fractions, decimals, and percents. Students have a white space area they can make and write on. They also have fraction, decimal, and percent manipulatives they can drag over into this area.

Within the settings, you can change the manipulatives from tiles to circles. Students can save an image of their work into the Camera Roll by clicking "Save". You can also import images into the white space by clicking the camera icon.

This is one of those apps that can be used in multiple ways - small group instruction, whole group instruction, and individual assessing. By adding the saved image from Virtual Manipulatives to a digital storytelling app, like ScreenChomp or Educreations, students can explain their reasoning behind what they created.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Number Pieces is an app I came across while helping my daughter with her homework. This is a free app by the Math Learning Center.

Number Pieces allows students to visualize and manipulative ones, tens, and hundreds to get a better understanding of place value. You can create numbers on the work space and write using the pen tool.

Students can put together and break apart numbers by simply circling the item and making a selection at the bottom of the screen. The help area explains everything the students can do on the app!